Unity-examples

This project assumes no familiarity with Unity whatsoever. The objective is to have examples that run out of the box and run programmatically without needing to interact manually with the Unity Editor to manipulate assets or modify settings. Fully automating a build is the foundation of a continuous integration process so I suppose I am aiming this project to be a starting point for an application that considers automation from the outset, or as much as possible.

Prerequisites

OS X

Run:

brew install unity

This asks for admin privileges as it will put Unity and Unity Hub into the /Applications directory.

The result of installation is that you now have this executable:

/Applications/Unity/Unity.app/Contents/MacOS/Unity

In the rest of this README.md, we will just refer to this as Unity. The CMakeLists.txt defines this full path and uses it. If using it outside cmake then obviously add it to your PATH or alias it for convenience.

To actually build anything you will need to obtain a license. You can select a free personal one if you are just an individual playing around.

Unity supports output to many different contexts. The WebGL context is pretty neat as it means you can create a game you can play through a web browser.

To be able to build to this context, which is what this project is set up to do, we need to:

brew install unity-webgl-support-for-editor

Build

Run:

cmake -B build -S .

to configure the build. In the usual cmake philosophy this creates an out-of-source build in the directory 'build/'. The conventional Unity project folders are to be found in there, some of which are copied from the source directory .. If the Unity Editor is to be opened manually, this is the project folder to open.

Then

cmake --build build --target webgl

Run

To actually run the project the server/ directory is used.

Node.js needs to be installed, which is most easily done via Node Version Manager (NVM) which gives you the option to try alternative versions.

You also need a self-signed cert in it, which you can create with OpenSSL like this:

cd server/
openssl genpkey -algorithm RSA -out private.key
openssl req -new -key private.key -x509 -days 365 -out certificate.crt -subj "/C=GB"
cd ..

Or with a different "/C=" or otherwise as you see fit. The country is the minimum you need in the subject field.

With node installed, you can:

cd server/
npm install
node server.js ../build/Builds/WebGL

Browse to https://localhost:8080/. The first time you will need to accept the connection warning and "Proceed to localhost (unsafe)" unless you do not trust your own certificate. Then enjoy!

Todo list/Roadmap

• Create self-signed cert and set up server.js as part of cmake build
• Fetch node.js automatically as part of cmake configure
• Rearrange project to allow for multiple applications to be built
• Make a more interesting application
• Support Development on Windows

Obtaining a license

You need to login to the unity website and create a unity id, and then to obtain and activate a license one follows the manual activation guide

Essentially that is to do the following

OS X

1. Run

Unity -batchmode -createManualActivationFile -logfile

Which will create a file like this:

Unity_v2022.1.23f1.alf

2. Browse to https://license.unity3d.com/manual and upload that file, selecting appropriate license etc. Then the license file can be downloaded. It will be something like:

Unity_v2022.x.ulf

3. Then you activate that license:

/Applications/Unity/Unity.app/Contents/MacOS/Unity -batchmode -manualLicenseFile Unity_v2022.x.ulf -logfile

These commands can be executed anywhere as they are to do with configuring the installation of Unity and have nothing to do with this project (except that this project needs a licensed Unity executable it can use).